During the first day of the first Test of Australia’s tour of India 2023, a confident Australian captain Pat Cummins won the toss and chose to bat primarily due to the dryness of the surface at the Vidarbha Cricket Association Stadium.
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“We are going to bat. Looks like a pretty even wicket towards the middle. We have had good preparation [on the back of Test tours of Pakistan and Sri Lanka in the last 12 months]. We feel we are really well placed,” Cummins told Star Sports Network at the toss.
Australia, whose last Test match was the New Year’s fixture against South Africa in Sydney, have handed debut to spinner Todd Murphy ahead of playing all-rounder Ashton Agar. It is worth a mention that it is going to be the first-ever overseas Test match for fast bowler Scott Boland. In an astonishing move, the visitors have dropped batter Travis Head for reasons unknown.
Why is Shubman Gill not playing today vs Australia?
Much like counterpart, India captain Rohit Sharma had also set eyes on batting first. However, with Cummins winning the first battle of this four-match series, India have no option than to chase a total in the fourth innings. Readers must note that no team has been able to seal a run-chase in Nagpur Tests thus far.
“We would have batted too. Looks pretty dry. There will be help for spinners. We got to wait and see how much it does. Yesterday, when we started training, we did see some seam movement for the pacers up front,” Sharma told Star Sports Network at the toss.
India have handed debuts to batter Suryakumar Yadav and wicket-keeper batter Srikar Bharat. With Sharma and vice-captain KL Rahul set to open the batting, all these developments have resulted in no spot for in-form batter Shubman Gill.
While it is true that most of Gill’s outstanding form has been recorded in white-ball formats, it is hard to ignore his maiden Test century in his penultimate Test seven weeks ago. Unlike Gill, Yadav’s heroics at the highest level have come only in the shortest format thus far.
With India deciding against batting Gill in the middle-order, they have voted in favour of Yadav’s attacking ability as a natural middle-order batter. That being said, Yadav playing a Test match ahead of Gill and other consistent domestic first-class performers is blatantly unfair on both those batters and the prestigious Ranji Trophy.
UPDATE: Shubman Gill isn’t playing the second Test against Australia in Delhi either as the team management has preferred vice-captain KL Rahul over him yet again.
